Samaipata

The valley was first farmed by the Chané, a people of Arawak origin known for their dense villages and their pottery. From about 300 CE they began shaping the great rock on the hill east of today's town into a ceremonial centre. Late in the 15th century the Inca, expanding east from the highlands, brought the area into their empire, apparently by agreement with the local ruler, and built an administrative and religious centre beside the rock, one of the easternmost outposts of their empire. Guaraní-speaking warriors from the plains later overran the area and destroyed it, and the name Samaipata — Quechua for "the heights of rest" — is the Inca legacy.

The Spaniards first settled at the rock itself, then moved to the valley, where Pedro de Escalante y Mendoza founded Samaipata in 1618 as a staging post between Santa Cruz and Vallegrande. Its old families descend from colonists of those towns and from the Guaraní of the valley. Arab families arrived from the 1880s, followed by a few Croatians and Italians.

The 20th century brought the road. On 6 July 1967 Che Guevara's guerrillas occupied the town, then home to about 1,400 people, for a few hours, three months before his capture in the same region. Once the highway was paved in the 1960s, migrants arrived from Santa Cruz, Cochabamba and Sucre, and from the 1970s Germans, Dutch, French, Argentines and others settled too, turning a quiet farming town into a resort for Santa Cruz and a stop on the road to the Andes.

Samaipata's character comes from its mixture. Old Samaipateño families, highland migrants and foreign residents share a small town, and the result is unusually cosmopolitan for rural Bolivia, with craft workshops, cafés and guesthouses alongside the market and the plaza. Quechua is spoken by about 15 per cent of the municipality's people.

For Cruceños the town is a weekend escape from the heat, and the pace changes with the calendar: quiet on weekdays, busy with families on holiday weekends. Many visitors come for the outdoors and for the region's past — El Fuerte, the cloud forests of Amboró and the route to La Higuera, where Che Guevara was killed in 1967 — and guiding has become a local trade.

Wine has become part of local identity. Vines were planted here soon after the first Spanish settlement, production faded during the republican period, and in recent decades the valleys of Santa Cruz, with Samaipata at their head, have become Bolivia's second wine region by planted area. Wine tourism now draws visitors from Santa Cruz, and local wineries have built names in the national market.

The 2024 census counted about 11,800 people in the municipality of Samaipata, which includes surrounding farming communities as well as the town itself. Life in the centre is small-scale and unhurried, built around the plaza, the market and the highway that brings buses, shared taxis and weekend traffic from Santa Cruz.

The economy rests on tourism, farming and crafts. The valley grows peaches, grapes, plums, strawberries, figs, chirimoyas — custard apples — and the local guapurú fruit, and its producers make wine, singani, honey, jams, cured meats, herbal teas and lavender products. Guesthouses, restaurants, guiding and the vineyards provide much of the work in town.

The mild climate shapes the year: dry, sunny winters with cold nights, and wet, green summers. Like the rest of Bolivia the town feels the national economic crisis and fuel shortages, and road blockades on the highway can cut it off from Santa Cruz, its market and its main source of visitors.

Samaipata eats as the lowlands do, with rice, cassava, beef and cheese, but its cooler valley adds fruit and wine. The everyday meal is the set lunch of soup and a main course, served at the counters on the first floor of the municipal market and in small restaurants near the plaza, and Santa Cruz favourites such as majadito, rice cooked with dried beef, and warm cuñapés, cassava and cheese rolls, are part of the local table.

The valley's own produce is what sets it apart. Orchards supply peaches, plums, figs, strawberries and chirimoyas, and the farms produce honey, jams, cured meats and herbal infusions, sold in town and along the road. With so many foreign residents, the town also has bakeries and international cooking.

Wine is the local drink of note: vineyards at about 1,750 metres produce high-altitude wines, and singani, Bolivia's grape brandy, is also distilled in the valley. Many vineyards near town offer tours with a tasting at the end.